Econintersect: At least that’s the opinion of Americans in a recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll. When asked to rank the harmfulness of four sustances tobbaco came out on top, alcohol was second and sugar was third. Pot was fourth, beaten out by sugar by more than 2 to 1.
Poll results for most harmful: Tobacco (49%), alcohol (24%), sugar 15%, marijuana 7%.
Marijuana ranked high on the list of recent news awareness with 57% having “seen, read or heard a lot of news”. Lesser awareness was found for the Affordable Care Act (44%), Ukraine crisis (39%) and court action against laws prohibiting same-sex marriage (34%).
Chuck Todd reports for NBC News:
Sources:
- Most harmful substance poll: tobacco first, sugar worse than marijuana (UPI, 12 March 2014)
- NBC/WSJ Poll: Americans Think Sugar Worse Than Pot (NBC News, 13 March 2014)
